The Phase II Enterprise

[Christopher]

The AM in the core IS being annihilated isn't it?

Yes, but not instantaneously. If something goes wrong with the containment fields before the antimatter in the core is used up, then you can get an explosion. Presumably that's what a warp core breach is. It's a breach in the fields that keep the annihilation reaction contained within the warp core.

That sounds like a retcon rather than the idea that there is no containment field (or at least that it's failure is what's necessary to eject the core when the core ejection idea only came much later (not before Voyager AFAIK), which makes it sound like circular logic instead of what was intended at the time.

What??? How can there not be a containment field? This is real physics. Antimatter needs to be confined within magnetic fields because it annihilates if it touches matter. It is impossible to handle antimatter without some form of containment field. We've known that since long before Star Trek ever existed.

And containment fields were mentioned in the original series. For instance, in "That Which Survives," Scotty said:

Any matter that comes in contact with antimatter triggers the explosion. And I'm not even sure a man can live in the crawlway in the energy stream of the magnetic field that bottles up the antimatter.

And in "The Savage Curtain," the ship was in danger of destruction because the shielding between the matter and antimatter was breaking down. Shielding which, obviously, couldn't be made of matter and thus had to consist of forcefields.

What I'm saying is that it wouldn't be instantaneous. It would take time. Heck, that's the whole point of the "swirl chamber" design in TMP, all those swirling lights inside the whole long shaft. The idea is that the matter and antimatter are mixing all the way along the shaft, a gradual process rather than an instantaneous one.

Interesting. I never interpreted it that way. Is there a canon explanation for that or is it your conjecture?

The information comes from Rick Sternbach -- I believe it was in a thread on this very BBS, though probably in a different forum. Rick worked on TMP and has a lot of cool insights into its production. The Voyager warp core (which Rick had a hand in designing) was based on the same swirl chamber principle, as opposed to the "pulse"-style warp cores of the Enterprise-D and -E and the Defiant.

I understood it that the antimatter bottles were in the bottom of the secondary hull and met in main Engineering in the secondary hull. The tube going to the top was to carry the power to the "main" ship (the saucer/primary hull) which is where the weapons, crew, and main power would be sent. The shape of the secondary hull mostly being to wrap around that and to supoprt the warp engines, which were kept away from the crew because they were powerful/dangerous ('warping' space and all that).

I don't see how any of that is incompatible with what I described.

Haven't you got it backwards? The primary hull is the one that's useless without the secondary hull. Or rather, neither hull is functional without the other. The hangar bay and nav deflector are hardly useless,

Note the context I made that remark in, which you seem to have lost. Useless in the event of the main primary hull PTS being out.

What is a "PTS?" Do you mean the PTCs, the power transfer conduits?

 

[Uxi]

Yes, but not instantaneously. If something goes wrong with the containment fields before the antimatter in the core is used up, then you can get an explosion. Presumably that's what a warp core breach is. It's a breach in the fields that keep the annihilation reaction contained within the warp core.

That sounds like a retcon rather than the idea that there is no containment field (or at least that it's failure is what's necessary to eject the core when the core ejection idea only came much later (not before Voyager AFAIK), which makes it sound like circular logic instead of what was intended at the time.

What??? How can there not be a containment field?

Why do you ignore what I put in the parenthesis? Sure, I recognize the canon of a field, but not doing what you're saying it does. I see "the containtment field" as the mechanism of what's regulating the flow of antimatter from the bottles to the reactor chamber. If that was failing, you would eject the bottles as a failsafe.

I really doubt the details of the reaction were ever detailed enough for this to resolvable. I guess you like the idea of ejecting the entire core while I still find it absurd and used only as something flashier than the more sensible idea of ejecting the bottles (which the core ejection idea looks to have effectively completely replaced WRT voyager) and we'll have to agree to disagree on it.

Haven't you got it backwards? The primary hull is the one that's useless without the secondary hull. Or rather, neither hull is functional without the other. The hangar bay and nav deflector are hardly useless,

Note the context I made that remark in, which you seem to have lost. Useless in the event of the main primary hull PTS being out.

What is a "PTS?" Do you mean the PTCs, the power transfer conduits?

System instead of Conduit, not intended as anything Official™ just as an acronym.

 

[Maurice]

I never liked the idea that the antimatter reactants were stored in the engineering hull as that flies in the face of what Jefferies appears to have intended. If I had to rationalize it, I'd say that the antimatter was stored in the nacelles, and reactants were channeled down to engineering and into the "boilers", and the resulting power transmitted back up to the nacelles for the warp drive. There's no reason the reactants have to be stored near the engine room. Quite the contrary, you'd want something that volatile easy to eject. And minus the reactants, the nacelles are dead mass.

 

[Christopher]

Why do you ignore what I put in the parenthesis? Sure, I recognize the canon of a field, but not doing what you're saying it does. I see "the containtment field" as the mechanism of what's regulating the flow of antimatter from the bottles to the reactor chamber. If that was failing, you would eject the bottles as a failsafe.

But it also needs to contain the annihilation reaction that's actually going on in the heart of the warp core. You can't let the antimatter touch any material portion of the engine at any point in the process, so there has to be a containment field at the actual point of the reaction as well. Indeed, according to the Sternbach/Okuda TNG Tech Manual, that's the role dilithium plays: when subjected to a powerful enough magnetic field, the dilithium crystal lattice becomes essentially a series of microscopic magnetic bottles, directing the antiparticles to pass between the atoms of the lattice so that no physical contact occurs except between the antiparticles and the matter-stream particles they're intended to react with. So yes, it is established that there need to be containment fields within the reactor core, not just between it and the fuel supply.

And what I'm saying is that the reaction in the core wouldn't use up all the antimatter instantaneously. So if the field in the core were what was breaking down, then it's the core itself, not the bottles, that you'd have to eject. Ejecting the bottles would do no good if the antimatter that's already in the core is breaching containment.

I really doubt the details of the reaction were ever detailed enough for this to resolvable.

TNG Technical Manual, pages 57-62.

I guess you like the idea of ejecting the entire core while I still find it absurd and used only as something flashier than the more sensible idea of ejecting the bottles (which the core ejection idea looks to have effectively completely replaced WRT voyager) and we'll have to agree to disagree on it.

I'm not saying I "like" anything. God, why is it that so many people online assume that every discussion has to be about personal preference or emotional bias? Doesn't anyone understand the concept of objectivity? What I'm saying is that the ejection of the warp core is an established reality of the Star Trek universe (whether we "like" it or not), and that we therefore need to explain it. Given the fact that warp cores rather than bottles get ejected, there must be a reason why the cores need to be ejected, and I'm saying that there is such a reason. There is certainly also good reason for ejecting the bottles in circumstances where the bottles themselves are failing; I've already said as much on multiple occasions, because I don't have a personal bias here. But we can't deny the fact that warp cores do get ejected. All we can do is explain why that happens.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

I never liked the idea that the antimatter reactants were stored in the engineering hull as that flies in the face of what Jefferies appears to have intended. If I had to rationalize it, I'd say that the antimatter was stored in the nacelles, and reactants were channeled down to engineering and into the "boilers", and the resulting power transmitted back up to the nacelles for the warp drive. There's no reason the reactants have to be stored near the engine room. Quite the contrary, you'd want something that volatile easy to eject. And minus the reactants, the nacelles are dead mass.

That makes sense.

 

[Uxi]

I really doubt the details of the reaction were ever detailed enough for this to resolvable.

TNG Technical Manual, pages 57-62.

Is that canon? Not too sure how Trek treats it, but I thought it was on the same level of non-canon as Mr. Scott's Guide.

I guess you like the idea of ejecting the entire core while I still find it absurd and used only as something flashier than the more sensible idea of ejecting the bottles (which the core ejection idea looks to have effectively completely replaced WRT voyager) and we'll have to agree to disagree on it.

I'm not saying I "like" anything. God, why is it that so many people online assume that every discussion has to be about personal preference or emotional bias? Doesn't anyone understand the concept of objectivity?

Sure, I understand it. How can you not understand that I just don't believe you're being objective since you're presenting yourself as a proponent of that theory?

But we can't deny the fact that warp cores do get ejected. All we can do is explain why that happens.

On an Intrepid, sure. Likely in replacement of ejecting the anti-matter bottles. On a Constitution-class, that has not be established at all and I most definitely do deny that as being plausible.

 

[Uxi]

I never liked the idea that the antimatter reactants were stored in the engineering hull as that flies in the face of what Jefferies appears to have intended. If I had to rationalize it, I'd say that the antimatter was stored in the nacelles, and reactants were channeled down to engineering and into the "boilers", and the resulting power transmitted back up to the nacelles for the warp drive. There's no reason the reactants have to be stored near the engine room. Quite the contrary, you'd want something that volatile easy to eject. And minus the reactants, the nacelles are dead mass.

Works for me.

Course, I don't have a problem with them as 'just' mechanisms for 'warping' space for FTL, either, as opposed to also being fuel storage.

 

[Captain Robert April]

I think that overthinks the plumbing. Plus, I've never liked the idea of the main fuel source being that exposed.

As for ejecting the core being a post-TNG notion, I suggest a closer reading of "That Which Survives"...

SCOTT: I've sealed off the aft end of the service crawlway, and I've positioned explosive separator charges to blast me clear of the ship if I rupture the magnetic bottle.

A bit later...

SCOTT: If the magnetic flow jumps, you must jettison me. The safety control will not hold more than two seconds if I rupture the field.

SPOCK: Lieutenant Uhura, you are monitoring the magnetic force?

UHURA: Oh yes, sir.

SPOCK: Please do not take your eyes off of it. Lieutenant Rahda, arm the pod jettison system.

RAHDA: Aye, sir. I'll jettison the pod at the first sign of trouble.

SPOCK: Not until my order.

I think this also shows that the term "pod" doesn't always refer to one of the nacelles.

 

[Christopher]

I really doubt the details of the reaction were ever detailed enough for this to resolvable.

TNG Technical Manual, pages 57-62.

Is that canon? Not too sure how Trek treats it, but I thought it was on the same level of non-canon as Mr. Scott's Guide.

Of course it's not canon, because it's not onscreen. But who cares? The topic under discussion is whether we can postulate a valid explanation for ejecting a warp core. It doesn't matter whether it's "real," because the whole damn thing is fictional anyway. The question is whether it can be plausibly explained.

But the TNG Tech Manual was written by two of TNG's key production illustrators/technology designers/scientific consultants, so it stands to reason that it reflects the actual thinking behind the design of the engine core itself. By contrast, Mr. Scott's Guide was written by someone with no direct participation in the production of Star Trek.

Sure, I understand it. How can you not understand that I just don't believe you're being objective since you're presenting yourself as a proponent of that theory?

What the hell are you talking about? I'm not taking sides here. I'm just saying that I can think of an explanation. You're the one who seems to think this is some kind of partisan issue where you have to favor one side and reject the other. And I have no comprehension of that kind of confrontational mentality when it comes to a simple matter of technical possibilities in an imaginary television show.

On an Intrepid, sure. Likely in replacement of ejecting the anti-matter bottles. On a Constitution-class, that has not be established at all and I most definitely do deny that as being plausible.

Okay, you're shifting the goalposts here. This discussion is not exclusively about the Constitution class. What started it was your own comment in post #84:

One thing this discussion does remind me of is how absurd the 'modern' Trek idea of ejecting the entire warp core is, instead of just the anti-matter bottles.

You yourself initially defined this discussion as being about the modern practice of core ejection in general. It was that practice that I was explaining the reasons for. So your objection here is a complete non sequitur.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I never liked the idea that the antimatter reactants were stored in the engineering hull as that flies in the face of what Jefferies appears to have intended. If I had to rationalize it, I'd say that the antimatter was stored in the nacelles, and reactants were channeled down to engineering and into the "boilers", and the resulting power transmitted back up to the nacelles for the warp drive. There's no reason the reactants have to be stored near the engine room. Quite the contrary, you'd want something that volatile easy to eject. And minus the reactants, the nacelles are dead mass.

When I interpreted just what I saw on screen of the TMP refit with a blank slate, I thought the conduit running through main engineering was feeding power to the rest of the ship from the nacelles (i.e. from the engines). I assumed that the main reaction was actually occurring in the nacelles. To me, this idea is incredibly simple and elegant. If I understand Maurice's idea, what I just said actually takes that idea one step further.

In TWOK, when the door drops down and severs the conduit, it separates the nacelles from the rest of the ship. If the main reaction were occurring in the nacelles, unavailability of the main energizer would follow simply because the conduit was no longer connected to the engines.

But, no. Diagrams published of the layout of the refit, in particular the famous cutaway poster, place the antimatter pods in the secondary hull at the bottom of vertical conduit. Also, there is an adamant movement right now in tech-oriented fandom to place TOS/TMP tech along the straight line between ENT and TNG tech. Personally, I'm not happy with this. However, I can also appreciate how writers might have little practical freedom to resist these factors, even if they might prefer to.

Also, I appreciate the point that there's no way to square the circle to embrace even just everything canonical, much less everything canonical plus all the officially licensed tech references. For this reason, I remain open to different versions of the ship layouts that embrace different elements of the whole body of published work.

 

[Judy Waxhorn]

This is my question: Just how much antimatter inventory is in the core at any given moment? It seems to me you wouldn't be pumping thousands of gallons of the stuff around. Maybe a pound or two... if that.

I fail to see what can be accomplished by ejecting the core when you can simply cut off the fuel supply and wait a couple of seconds for the reaction to burn out.

Failing to shut off the fuel supply would fuck you even if you ejected the core, as now you have a big hole where the core was, and a "pipe" still gushing antimatter.

Someone failed to think the failure-mode through and simply went for what sounded cool.


A warp-core accident scenario would more properly go like: Containment is failing so the fuel supply is shut off and the coolant system ramped up to full. All internal pressure and plasma is vented overboard as rapidly as possible and some kind of "quench" is applied to dampen whatever secondary reactions are happening internally.

The only reason I could see to eject the core is if there was some kind of secondary fuckery happening in the core with the crystal. Or perhaps in the lining (trilith resin?) of the core... or something to that effect.

My opinion... and my canon. YMMV and I hope it does because I love all these nifty alternate takes ya'll come up with.

 

[Christopher]

This is my question: Just how much antimatter inventory is in the core at any given moment? It seems to me you wouldn't be pumping thousands of gallons of the stuff around. Maybe a pound or two... if that.

A single gram of antimatter -- the mass of a typical paper clip -- reacting with a comparable amount of matter will give you an explosion roughly the size of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs combined. More than enough to blow up a starship. A pound or two of antimatter would give you a blast comparable to the Mount St. Helens explosion of 1980.

I fail to see what can be accomplished by ejecting the core when you can simply cut off the fuel supply and wait a couple of seconds for the reaction to burn out.

A catastrophic antimatter explosion would be over in milliseconds. If anything, the problem is with the way the ejection process is portrayed onscreen, as something you have advance warning about. In that context, if you have seconds of warning before the fields break down, then yes, it would make sense to shut down the injectors first. Logically, core ejection would be a response to breakdowns happening far too fast for the human crew to respond to.

Of course, you'd need magnetic containment for the plasma streams all the way through the core, both at the injectors and in the reactor chamber. So if something's going wrong with your engine that's disrupting the containment fields, that could also prevent you from controlling the fuel injection at all. They'd be part and parcel of the same problem.

Let's keep in mind that the original idea behind a core breach, as seen in "Contagion," was that it was an astonishingly rare and unlikely kind of failure, something that would only happen if a ton of different systems failed at once -- including the multiple layers of failsafes designed to prevent it. Surely those failsafes would include the sort of thing you're talking about, shutting down the injectors and whatnot. The idea is that core ejection is the absolute last-ditch failsafe after all the other failsafes have, well, failed. So it's a mistake to think that core ejection exists instead of other, less extreme failsafes. Those other failsafes are supposed to exist, and core ejection is the last resort if they don't work. The problem, of course, is that later writers overused core breaches to such a ridiculous degree that all those multiple layers of failsafes were neglected and core jettison came to be portrayed as the default option.

 

[Judy Waxhorn]

Agreed. It shows an astonishing lack of creativity.

And it also reflects poorly on the tech-writer(s) Sort of like how all nuclear power plants "go critical" and meltdown/explode... in every blasted movie to feature some kind of nuclear doom situation.

Yawn.

More dramatic would be a situation where the core shut itself down at a really really bad moment due to an internal fault... and now the backup systems are failing because SOMEONE forgot to feed the hamster/plug the emerg. battery back in to the charger/forgot to pay the electric bill/something something Subspace/it's not Tuesday or whatever you can think of.

"OMG TEH CORE HAS TEH EXPLOSORS!!!"
"Again?"
"Still?"
"Wasn't this the plot of last week's episode?!"

 

[Christopher]

Agreed. It shows an astonishing lack of creativity.

And it also reflects poorly on the tech-writer(s) Sort of like how all nuclear power plants "go critical" and meltdown/explode... in every blasted movie to feature some kind of nuclear doom situation.

Hey, don't blame the technical advisors. They are only advisors, after all, and the people who write the episodes are under no obligation to listen to their advice. Given pages and pages of solid scientific and engineering notes from their advisors, scriptwriters are just as likely to toss it all out and replace it with something that's simpler and more exciting.

 

[Judy Waxhorn]

Agreed. It shows an astonishing lack of creativity.

And it also reflects poorly on the tech-writer(s) Sort of like how all nuclear power plants "go critical" and meltdown/explode... in every blasted movie to feature some kind of nuclear doom situation.

Hey, don't blame the technical advisors. They are only advisors, after all, and the people who write the episodes are under no obligation to listen to their advice. Given pages and pages of solid scientific and engineering notes from their advisors, scriptwriters are just as likely to toss it all out and replace it with something that's simpler and more exciting.

I prefer entertainment that doesn't insult my intelligence.

Then again I watch Star Trek. Maybe the problem IS me after all!

 

[Christopher]

^That's fine, but I'm just saying that the technical consultants are not the ones you should blame, because they don't have control over what ends up onscreen.

 

[Uxi]

TNG Technical Manual, pages 57-62.

Is that canon? Not too sure how Trek treats it, but I thought it was on the same level of non-canon as Mr. Scott's Guide.

Of course it's not canon, because it's not onscreen.

Ok, that's what I thought. It's certainly not authoritative in this context.

What the hell are you talking about? I'm not taking sides here. I'm just saying that I can think of an explanation.

As the only one really defending that notion, you ARE one of the sides. How can you not see that? I don't mean it as a pejorative, so you don't need to be so defensive. Chill out, man.

On an Intrepid, sure. Likely in replacement of ejecting the anti-matter bottles. On a Constitution-class, that has not be established at all and I most definitely do deny that as being plausible.

Okay, you're shifting the goalposts here. This discussion is not exclusively about the Constitution class. What started it was your own comment in post #84:

One thing this discussion does remind me of is how absurd the 'modern' Trek idea of ejecting the entire warp core is, instead of just the anti-matter bottles.

Sure. And I stand by that 100%. I think it's most likely that the writers on Voyager either 1) didn't know about the magnetic bottle idea but had heard of "warp core" several times through TNG, most specifically Contagion 2) Didn't trust the audience to appreciate the difference between the two and/or didn't want to spend a couple lines of dialogue explaining it and/or 3) just thought it would be cool to have the whole pulsing light thing ejected out instead of just a crucial piece.

 

[Uxi]

This is my question: Just how much antimatter inventory is in the core at any given moment? It seems to me you wouldn't be pumping thousands of gallons of the stuff around. Maybe a pound or two... if that.

I fail to see what can be accomplished by ejecting the core when you can simply cut off the fuel supply and wait a couple of seconds for the reaction to burn out.

Right. Well substitute some small portion of micrograms to kilograms for "pounds," depending on power consumption needs (rest vs low warp vs high warp vs battle condition, etc). I don't think it needs to be more complicated than that

The only reason I could see to eject the core is if there was some kind of secondary fuckery happening in the core with the crystal. Or perhaps in the lining (trilith resin?) of the core... or something to that effect.

My opinion... and my canon. YMMV and I hope it does because I love all these nifty alternate takes ya'll come up with.

Agreed.

 

[Christopher]

As the only one really defending that notion, you ARE one of the sides. How can you not see that?

Because there are no "sides" and it's silly to define it that way. We're just discussing a hypothetical, fictional scenario, considering the possibilities. You're the one who insists on seeing this as some kind of partisan conflict. If you think what I'm doing constitutes "defending" rather than simply discussing/explaining, then that implies that you consider yourself to be attacking my position.

Sure. And I stand by that 100%. I think it's most likely that the writers on Voyager either 1) didn't know about the magnetic bottle idea but had heard of "warp core" several times through TNG, most specifically Contagion 2) Didn't trust the audience to appreciate the difference between the two and/or didn't want to spend a couple lines of dialogue explaining it and/or 3) just thought it would be cool to have the whole pulsing light thing ejected out instead of just a crucial piece.

You really need to consult the sources. The idea of core ejection was established by the production staffers of TNG, and it's spelled out in the Sternbach/Okuda Tech Manual that I've already referred you to. The section headed "5.10 Catastrophic Emergency Procedures" on p. 73 describes and illustrates the extreme emergency procedure by which either the warp core or the antimatter pods, or both, could be ejected if the need arose. Also, the earlier Writers' Technical Manual, a behind-the-scenes reference which was provided to aspiring writers for the show, listed both warp core breach and antimatter containment failure in its section of potential emergency scenarios that writers might wish to build stories around. The Enterprise-D was actually designed with jettisonable hull plates on the underside to allow for core and pod ejection. So both pod ejection and core ejection were developed as parallel scenarios from the very beginning of TNG. You may be right that later writers tended to favor the core breach scenario due to its familiarity, but you're completely wrong to think it somehow originated on Voyager.

 

[Captain Robert April]

When I interpreted just what I saw on screen of the TMP refit with a blank slate, I thought the conduit running through main engineering was feeding power to the rest of the ship from the nacelles (i.e. from the engines). I assumed that the main reaction was actually occurring in the nacelles. To me, this idea is incredibly simple and elegant. If I understand Maurice's idea, what I just said actually takes that idea one step further.

However simple and elegant you may think it is, it's completely backasswards wrong, and how you came to that conclusion is mystifying. I thought it was pretty bloody clear that the power was being generated in the big glowy tube and channeled TO the nacelles.

In TWOK, when the door drops down and severs the conduit, it separates the nacelles from the rest of the ship. If the main reaction were occurring in the nacelles, unavailability of the main energizer would follow simply because the conduit was no longer connected to the engines.

Sure about that? The doors came down because Reliant was shooting big flaming holes in the hull, not because power needed to be cut off; who's to say that the doors aren't designed in such a way that power to the nacelles is uninterrupted?

But, no. Diagrams published of the layout of the refit, in particular the famous cutaway poster, place the antimatter pods in the secondary hull at the bottom of vertical conduit.

Based upon Andrew Probert's layouts.

Also, there is an adamant movement right now in tech-oriented fandom to place TOS/TMP tech along the straight line between ENT and TNG tech. Personally, I'm not happy with this. However, I can also appreciate how writers might have little practical freedom to resist these factors, even if they might prefer to.

Well, the case is there to be made, and among the supporters are those who have actually worked on the show, so I like my side's chances better than the Fanon Luddites.

Also, I appreciate the point that there's no way to square the circle to embrace even just everything canonical, much less everything canonical plus all the officially licensed tech references. For this reason, I remain open to different versions of the ship layouts that embrace different elements of the whole body of published work.

Unless they try and make the tech progression from era to era more logical and consistent, hmm?